Press Release: Progress Missouri Files Complaint With Ethics Commission Regarding Lobbyists’ Abuse of 'Group Expenditure' Loophole - The Missouri Times

Press Release: Progress Missouri Files Complaint With Ethics Commission Regarding Lobbyists’ Abuse of 'Group Expenditure' Loophole - The Missouri Times





For Immediate Release



Media Contact: Sean Soendker Nicholson, (573) 427-7326, sean@progressmissouri.org




Progress Missouri Files Complaint With Ethics Commission Regarding Lobbyists’ Abuse of ‘Group Expenditure’ Loophole




JEFFERSON CITY – Progress Missouri filed a complaint with the
Missouri Ethics Commission on Tuesday regarding the improper reporting
of gifts to just five Republican legislators on an American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC) junket as gifts to the “Entire General
Assembly.”




Missouri law requires registered lobbyists to report the free food,
drink, trips, tickets and other gifts they provide to elected officials
as part of their efforts to influence public policy on behalf of their
paying clients. But lobbyists are continually and increasingly reporting
gifts to handfuls of legislators as ‘group expenditures,’ even though
the lobbyists know exactly which public officials received the gifts.
St. Louis Public Radio’s Chris McDaniel reported in June that “directing gifts to groups has been on the rise” in Missouri, and “nearly 80 percent of all the spending on gifts went toward group” for 2014 at the time of his analysis.




The complaint filed this week focuses on one $3,000 meal
in Dallas, Texas enjoyed by Speaker Tim Jones, Speaker-Elect John
Diehl, ALEC State Co-Chair Sue Allen, ALEC State Co-Chair Ed Emery and
Sen. Wayne Wallingford.  Representatives Jeremy LaFaver and Caleb
Rowden have both stated publicly that they were not invited to the
gathering, making the event ineligible for reporting as a gift to the
“Entire General Assembly.”




Lobbyist Charles G Simino reported the names of the individual
legislators who attended this dinner because the “Entire General
Assembly” did not enjoy the $3,000 dinner in a Dallas steakhouse one
Saturday night in August.  “I know who is having dinner with us. The total General Assembly was not there, so I cannot report it as such,” he told The Kansas City Star.




Progress Missouri’s full complaint, along with details on the years
of ALEC junket expenditures reported as group expenditures, may be found
at ProgressMissouri.org/MEC-Complaint.